5 ms·

I tried out NewsBlur and sadly, Feedly seems leagues better.

by electic 14y ago

Roritharr 14y ago
Could you atleast describe what is better about Feedly, so not only the creator of NewsBlur, but also anyone looking to spend money on an RSS Solution gets your informed input?
- lazugod 14y ago
  I briefly tried both. * Feedly has a simple interface which is much more like Google Reader. But it depends on a plugin (or an app) rather than being an allwhere accessible website. Their Kindle Fire app seemed to load content extremely slowly, and its interface wasn't a simple list. And it's free, so I can't be a customer and I don't know how they earn money. * NewsBlur is complicated and unresponsive. There are a lot of inscrutable unlabeled icons, and I don't understand why an arrow follows the mouse. It's a paid service - I can be a customer - but I don't know how sustainable NewsBlur will be with its current issues and with subscription as its only source of funding. If NewsBlur seems solid by May, I'll gladly pay them. If Feedly seems less like a faceless data-miner by May, I'll use them.
  - korg250 14y ago
    "and I don't understand why an arrow follows the mouse." Really? It is a feature for better reading, so you can can easily see which line you are.
    - bsg75 14y ago
      Make sense now that someone points it out! For those who mouse click to mark reading point.
      - glenra 14y ago
        Aha. It somehow hadn't occurred to me to click on that triangle. I'm still not sure it's a useful-to-me feature, but it at least makes a little more sense now. It's less annoying once locked down, anyway. Maybe it should default to being locked down somewhere and only unlock the first time you click on it, rather than default to floating around freely.
    - glenra 14y ago
      You mean so as to remember where you were last reading are on the page? But if you use the mouse to switch browser tabs, that arrow moves up to the top of the page, and if you use any of the controls at the bottom, it moves down. I guess one could very carefully leave the window at a specific place so as to preserve that arrow's position, but it's not an obvious thing to do. How are you using this feature that makes it an improvement over just letting your pointer itself mark the current reading position?
  - rssident 14y ago
    Try http://rssident.com http://rssident.com I am working on making the UI more user friendly and adding OPML import/export. It's going to be supported by advertising with a subscription service for premium features and no ads.
    - tmzt 14y ago
      I like the predictive aspect Personally, I'm looking for something with a GR atom API, possibly to even run the existing GR frontend against, not a new UI with a different focus (I would prefer one focusing on curation and workflow over social or sharing).
    - alexfarran 14y ago
      I was attracted by the basic looking design, but I can't work out how to do anything. Why am I subscribed to a huge number of random feeds? How do I get rid of them? How do I view the content of the feed instead of opening a new window on the original site?
      - rssident 14y ago
        If you haven't added any feeds to your favorites then viewing 'My Favorites' shows all feeds by default. Still working on the UI to show the article content and links to attached files.
- electic 14y ago
  I love NewsBlur but I found it a bit busy in the UI. It seemed like a lot for what it really needed to do. That being said, Feedly's minimalistic UI was far better. However, Feedly is a bit slower when there are tons of stories on the screen. Overall I found Feedly to be better.
Semaphor 14y ago
I tried both and NewsBlur seems leagues better. It guess it depends on what you want. For me the interface of NewsBlur is so much better for getting through tons of feeds,
jbigelow76 14y ago
I looked at Feedly and Newsblur last week as I look for my eventual Google Reader replacement. Feedly turned me off because it has no open web implementation, it runs through the Chrome web store. Aside from some developer related plugins I refuse to use a completely superfluous wrapper around a website if I am on my PC. I've tried Newsblur but it's just so "busy" (I know where my mouse is on the vertical axis thank you very much). I may warm to it, but I'll probably end up with something a little simpler. But I wish all the success in the world to conesus, a variety of small, customer focused, customer capitalized independent web service vendors is a good thing for all of us.
- conesus 14y ago
  You should lock that "dorito" that follows your mouse. It allows you to adjust the currently selected story. It's an indicator line. Maybe I should lock it by default and allow you to click on it to have it follow your mouse...
  - UberMouse 14y ago
    I wasn't aware you could do this. Locking it by default seems like it would make more sense. Also while I've got you, two issues I've noticed. 1. When I click "All Stories" to refresh my feeds it defaults to listing everything, even though I have it set so I only view one item at a time. As soon as I click the button/arrow to go to the next unread item it shows the first item as it should and everything works fine after that. 2. I seem to run out of items after I've viewed ~20ish and I have to click "All Stories" again to fetch a new bunch I'm using the dev site if that matters (Issues happen on both sites though). So far these are the only things annoying me and otherwise newsblur is pretty good.
    - conesus 14y ago
      1. Intentional. Otherwise you'd stare at a blank screen until you click a story. 2. That's an unfortunate bug, but one that will probably get sussed out when I work on scaling over the next month. Dev is largely just a re-skin. They share a backend.

I tried out NewsBlur and sadly, Feedly seems leagues better.

by electic 14y ago

I tried out NewsBlur and sadly, Feedly seems leagues better.

Could you atleast describe what is better about Feedly, so not only the creator of NewsBlur, but also anyone looking to spend money on an RSS Solution gets your informed input?

lazugod 14y ago
I briefly tried both. * Feedly has a simple interface which is much more like Google Reader. But it depends on a plugin (or an app) rather than being an allwhere accessible website. Their Kindle Fire app seemed to load content extremely slowly, and its interface wasn't a simple list. And it's free, so I can't be a customer and I don't know how they earn money. * NewsBlur is complicated and unresponsive. There are a lot of inscrutable unlabeled icons, and I don't understand why an arrow follows the mouse. It's a paid service - I can be a customer - but I don't know how sustainable NewsBlur will be with its current issues and with subscription as its only source of funding. If NewsBlur seems solid by May, I'll gladly pay them. If Feedly seems less like a faceless data-miner by May, I'll use them.
- korg250 14y ago
  "and I don't understand why an arrow follows the mouse." Really? It is a feature for better reading, so you can can easily see which line you are.
  - bsg75 14y ago
    Make sense now that someone points it out! For those who mouse click to mark reading point.
    - glenra 14y ago
      Aha. It somehow hadn't occurred to me to click on that triangle. I'm still not sure it's a useful-to-me feature, but it at least makes a little more sense now. It's less annoying once locked down, anyway. Maybe it should default to being locked down somewhere and only unlock the first time you click on it, rather than default to floating around freely.
  - glenra 14y ago
    You mean so as to remember where you were last reading are on the page? But if you use the mouse to switch browser tabs, that arrow moves up to the top of the page, and if you use any of the controls at the bottom, it moves down. I guess one could very carefully leave the window at a specific place so as to preserve that arrow's position, but it's not an obvious thing to do. How are you using this feature that makes it an improvement over just letting your pointer itself mark the current reading position?
- rssident 14y ago
  Try http://rssident.com http://rssident.com I am working on making the UI more user friendly and adding OPML import/export. It's going to be supported by advertising with a subscription service for premium features and no ads.
  - tmzt 14y ago
    I like the predictive aspect Personally, I'm looking for something with a GR atom API, possibly to even run the existing GR frontend against, not a new UI with a different focus (I would prefer one focusing on curation and workflow over social or sharing).
  - alexfarran 14y ago
    I was attracted by the basic looking design, but I can't work out how to do anything. Why am I subscribed to a huge number of random feeds? How do I get rid of them? How do I view the content of the feed instead of opening a new window on the original site?
    - rssident 14y ago
      If you haven't added any feeds to your favorites then viewing 'My Favorites' shows all feeds by default. Still working on the UI to show the article content and links to attached files.
electic 14y ago
I love NewsBlur but I found it a bit busy in the UI. It seemed like a lot for what it really needed to do. That being said, Feedly's minimalistic UI was far better. However, Feedly is a bit slower when there are tons of stories on the screen. Overall I found Feedly to be better.

Semaphor 14y ago

I tried both and NewsBlur seems leagues better. It guess it depends on what you want. For me the interface of NewsBlur is so much better for getting through tons of feeds,

jbigelow76 14y ago

I looked at Feedly and Newsblur last week as I look for my eventual Google Reader replacement. Feedly turned me off because it has no open web implementation, it runs through the Chrome web store. Aside from some developer related plugins I refuse to use a completely superfluous wrapper around a website if I am on my PC. I've tried Newsblur but it's just so "busy" (I know where my mouse is on the vertical axis thank you very much). I may warm to it, but I'll probably end up with something a little simpler. But I wish all the success in the world to conesus, a variety of small, customer focused, customer capitalized independent web service vendors is a good thing for all of us.

conesus 14y ago
You should lock that "dorito" that follows your mouse. It allows you to adjust the currently selected story. It's an indicator line. Maybe I should lock it by default and allow you to click on it to have it follow your mouse...
- UberMouse 14y ago
  I wasn't aware you could do this. Locking it by default seems like it would make more sense. Also while I've got you, two issues I've noticed. 1. When I click "All Stories" to refresh my feeds it defaults to listing everything, even though I have it set so I only view one item at a time. As soon as I click the button/arrow to go to the next unread item it shows the first item as it should and everything works fine after that. 2. I seem to run out of items after I've viewed ~20ish and I have to click "All Stories" again to fetch a new bunch I'm using the dev site if that matters (Issues happen on both sites though). So far these are the only things annoying me and otherwise newsblur is pretty good.
  - conesus 14y ago
    1. Intentional. Otherwise you'd stare at a blank screen until you click a story. 2. That's an unfortunate bug, but one that will probably get sussed out when I work on scaling over the next month. Dev is largely just a re-skin. They share a backend.